I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home
Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by: Time * New Yorker * Sunday Times (UK)
From New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a dazzling memoir about unlocking and embracing her creativity--and how it saved her life.
In this brilliant, fierce, and funny memoir of transformation, Jami Attenberg--described as a "master of modern fiction" (Entertainment Weekly) and the "poet laureate of difficult families" (Kirkus Reviews)--reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. What does it take to devote oneself to art? What does it mean to own one's ideas? What does the world look like for a woman moving solo through it?
As the daughter of a traveling salesman in the Midwest, Attenberg was drawn to a life on the road. Frustrated by quotidian jobs and hungry for inspiration and fresh experiences, her wanderlust led her across the country and eventually on travels around the globe. Through it all she grapples with questions of mortality, otherworldliness, and what we leave behind.
It is during these adventures that she begins to reflect on the experiences of her youth--the trauma, the challenges, the risks she has taken. Driving across America on self-funded book tours, sometimes crashing on couches when she was broke, she keeps writing: in researching articles for magazines, jotting down ideas for novels, and refining her craft, she grows as an artist and increasingly learns to trust her gut and, ultimately, herself.
Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class, and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring story of finding one's way home--emotionally, artistically, and physically--and an examination of art and individuality that will resonate with anyone determined to listen to their own creative calling.
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About the Author
Jami Attenberg has written about food, travel, books, relationships and urban life for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times (UK), The Guardian, and others. She is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up, and, most recently, a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She is also the creator of the annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer, which will be published in book form in January 2024. She lives in New Orleans.
Reviews
A wise and witty glimpse behind the travels and travails of one of our most beloved contemporary novelists. I Came All This Way To Meet You brims with humor, humility, pathos, and intelligence. I gulped down every page and finished sated, as if I'd spent a long weekend with a dear friend. --Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood
"This stunning work explores home not solely as geographic place but also as a mobile metaphor for the relationships we consistently run to and away from. Jami Attenberg cements her place as one of our greatest, most agile writers."
--Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy and Long Division
I Came All This Way to Meet You--which features the shining prose that characterizes Attenberg's fiction, while allowing us a glimpse behind the curtain of her process and her personal history--is one of the most artistically invigorating books I've read in years. It made me want to sit down and write.--Liz Moore, author of Long Bright River
"A remarkable memoir I'll be re-reading forever."--Ashley C. Ford, author of Somebody's Daughter
"I Came All This Way To Meet You showcases all the very best of Jami Attenberg's gifts, bringing intimacy to the forefront of the work, asking the reader to stay close, pay attention, to learn. The book is an embrace, a love letter to work and to friendship."--Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth--Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth
